Electronic camera

Abstract

The present invention relates to an electronic camera which images an object image and records image data. Particularly, the present invention relates to technology to record image data in a good shooting state, such as with little blurring due to hand shaking. The invention has an image pick-up means which continuously images an object, a temporary memory means which temporarily stores a plurality of frames of image data which are continuously imaged by the image pick-up means, a shooting evaluation means which evaluates a good or bad shooting state of the image data imaged by the image pick-up means, a still image selection means which selects the image data with the highest evaluation of the shooting evaluation means among the image data which are stored in the temporary memory means, and an image saving means which saves the image data which is selected by the still image selection means.

What is claimed is: 
     
       1. An electronic camera comprising:
 image pick-up means for continuously imaging an object; 
 a memory medium that stores image data; 
 shooting evaluation means that obtains one evaluation relating to a blur amount of the electronic camera before an operation of a release button for recording the image data, obtains the evaluation for each image data continuously shot by the image pick-up means according to the operation of the release button for recording the image data, and evaluates a good or bad shooting state for each frame by the evaluation; 
 comparison means for comparing the evaluation of said shooting evaluation means concerning the image data within said memory medium with the evaluation of said shooting evaluation means concerning new image data from said image pick-up means; 
 image overwriting means for overwriting and recording an entire frame of the new image data to said memory medium when the evaluation of the new image data is higher than the evaluation of the image data within the memory medium in accordance with a comparison result of said comparison means; and 
 image recording means for recording, on a memory card, the image data that is recorded on the memory medium at a point in time at which the comparing the evaluation for each frame of the image data continuously shot by the image pick-up means has ended. 
 
     
     
       2. The electronic camera as set forth in  claim 1 ,
 wherein, as at least one of the good or bad evaluations of said shooting state, said shooting evaluation means detects a blurring amount and/or a misfocus amount of said image pick-up means. 
 
     
     
       3. The electronic camera as set forth in  claim 2 ,
 wherein, as at least one of the good or bad evaluations of said shooting state, said shooting evaluation means determines a spatial frequency component of said image data. 
 
     
     
       4. The electronic camera as set forth in  claim 3 ,
 wherein said shooting evaluation means determines a high-area component amount of the spatial frequency, based upon a compressed encoding amount of said image data. 
 
     
     
       5. The electronic camera as set forth in  claim 4 ,
 wherein, as at least one of the good or bad evaluations of said shooting state, said shooting evaluation means determines a release time lag, which is a time difference between a release operation of the electronic camera and an image pick-up time of the image data. 
 
     
     
       6. An electronic camera comprising a controller that:
 obtains one evaluation relating to a blur amount of the electronic camera before an operation of a release button for recording image data, obtains the evaluation based on a spatial frequency component for each image data continuously shot according to the operation of the release button for recording the image data, and evaluates a good or bad shooting state for each frame by the evaluation; 
 compares the evaluation concerning the image data within a memory medium with the evaluation concerning new image data; 
 overwrites and records an entire frame of the new image data to said memory medium when the evaluation of the new image data is higher than the evaluation of the image data within the memory medium in accordance with a comparison result of the evaluation concerning the image data within the memory medium with the evaluation concerning the new image data; and 
 records, on a memory card, the image data that is recorded on the memory medium at a point in time at which comparing the evaluation for each frame of the image data has ended. 
 
     
     
       7. An electronic camera comprising:
 image pick-up means for continuously imaging an object; 
 a memory medium that stores image data; 
 shooting evaluation means that obtains a first evaluation relating to a blur amount of the electronic camera before recording temporarily the image data, obtains a second evaluation relating to a blur amount for each image data continuously shot by the image pick-up means after setting the first evaluation, and evaluates a good or bad shooting state for each frame; 
 comparison means for comparing the first evaluation of said shooting evaluation means concerning the image data within said memory medium with the second evaluation of said shooting evaluation means concerning new image data from said image pick-up means; 
 image temporary recording means for recording temporarily an entire frame of the new image data to said memory medium when the second evaluation of the new image data is higher than the first evaluation of the image data within the memory medium in accordance with a comparison result of said comparison means; and 
 image recording means for recording, on a memory card, the image data that is recorded temporarily by the image temporary recording means on the memory medium at a point in time at which the comparing the first evaluation with the second evaluation for each frame of the image data continuously shot by the image pick-up means has ended.